


Within You

by crimson_adder



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Character Study, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Goblin Town, Jareth (Labyrinth) Backstory, Jareth (Labyrinth) Being An Asshole, Magic, Mythology - Freeform, Witchcraft, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 03:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11050386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_adder/pseuds/crimson_adder
Summary: Jareth can't understand why Sarah came back for Toby.There is a legacy to the Goblin King that extends well past the boundaries of a single story.





	Within You

↹

"Oh, he's a lively little chap, I think I'll call him Jareth," he says, holding the child in his lap and gazing at it intently. "He's got my eyes."

It’s a joke. The goblins polishing his boots fail to laugh, but they wouldn't have understood anyway, so he does not reprimand their negligence.

The girl had cried out the babe's name enough times that the word rings in Jareth's head like the bell that chimes the hour. 

Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby. 

He switches feet and reclines back into his throne, wondering, briefly, how long it will take for Toby to forget that name. 

It had taken him years to forget.

Then again, he had been older than Toby.

↩

The Labyrinth is alive.

The Labyrinth has always been alive.

Creatures, wild or tame or with an overabundance of teeth, scuttle in the shadows as they do in all the corners of the goblin Realm. Some of them avoid the sunlight, some avoid the crystalline gaze of their omniscient ruler. 

Others just scurry because that is the way of things in the Labyrinth: out of the corner of your eye is the only place they exist. 

At the center sits the goblin City, and on the highest hill, the goblin Castle. From the parapets, the Labyrinth extends beyond vision and comprehension. It looks smaller from the outside, and infinite from within.

Magic runs through the walls of the Labyrinth, an aching, seething current that is as ancient as it is mad. It roils beneath the Bog of Eternal Stench and in the dark metallic trees of the Iron Forest, and the vast dry waste of the Silent Sands.

There are levels and layers and traps. Stairs up, slides down, and elaborate paths invisible to the naked eye until you're already lost upon them.

From the throne at the center, every corner is bared and stripped of mystery, and the magic that remains is raw and terrible and enough to drive a witness mad.

Jareth has watched for what must have been a thousand years, long enough to forget the way the sun had felt in the Above, long enough to learn the secrets the Labyrinth hides in its changing walls, long enough for the goblins to remake him in their image, and long enough that he feels he will lose all sight if he looks away for too long.

And watch he must, so watch he does, because that is the way things are done.

For as long as time has marked the rings of a tree, there has been a throne at the center of the Labyrinth, and for as long as there has been a throne, there has been someone to sit it.

The goblin King must always sit the throne.

And if there is no one to sit, then someone must be found.

↸

Jareth's time is coming to a close. His eyes are unfocused more often than not, and the magic slips away from him when he lets his gaze wander.

The goblins watch the human world for their next trophy, gathered before the glass, while Jareth watches the farthest reaches of the Labyrinth. 

He extends himself into the depths of dark, insane magic, until he was part of the walls, the vines that twist between stones, the supports between doorways, and the foundation beneath them all, and does not quite remember what is is to be human.

Or as close as he has been, for all those years.

He went blind in one eye long before they follow the call to a pristine white bedroom, where a squalling infant lolls about, abandoned to the dark. Even there, the shadows of the Labyrinth take up one portion of his vision and attention, forever fixed on those infinite, fractal corners.

Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby.

The girl plays her part with all the conviction of a coward, and Jareth plays her villain, tempts her with his trinkets and charms, the white of his teeth and the barest flash of infinity in a crystal ball.

Then her wide eyes narrow, and her soft white face firms to kiln-hardened porcelain. Breathtaking and solid, but fragile enough to shatter given the right amount of force.

Even the wild Labyrinth obeys the laws of magic, and Jareth the laws of the Labyrinth. The laws dictate he offer her a fighting chance, but for the Life of him he can’t understand why she does not turn away. She has asked for this. She said the words, called them from their stasis, offered them hope and now she wishes to take it all back?

He gave her what she asked for. What's said is said.

He can only manipulate so much in the ancient magic, but he does what he can. He pulls the strings to set her up to fail, to fall through his net and out the other side, safely away and unknowing, to face the consequences of her actions in her own Realm.

**⇅**

It's a title, not a name.

Goblins have short life spans and extensive written histories that chronicled the tale of the Labyrinth long past memory and well into legend. No goblin lives that had witnessed Jareth's crowning to the goblin throne. To them he is as the legends of the Labyrinth and the throne, as eternal and as elusively mysterious.

To them, he has never been anything but Jareth, and Jareth has always been the goblin King.

While the girl wanders the Turning Stones in the outer reaches of the Labyrinth, Jareth twirls crystals before the mesmerized eyes of the babe, whose fat hands are sticky and eager to touch the spinning glass.

Jareth shows him, again and again, the conjuration to let them wink into existence and then slip back to the hoard where they lay dormant until called. It is the first spell he had learned, and the first spell that the boy-child will learn, as soon as he has the word for it.

While the child is distracted, a small wrinkled goblin weaves the first bone into his hair, tying it tight with a lock of Jareth’s own. It nestles in among his curls, nearly invisible. 

When he is grown, the locks will be inseparable, and the magic will be as much a part of him as of the Labyrinth.

The goblin pulls the knot tight, and Toby cries out, his sticky fingers reaching for the tug on his scalp. Jareth vanishes the crystals and pulls him close enough to capture pale blue eyes with his own. When he shakes his head, the child is close enough to hear the faint clatter of bones and feathers in Jareth’s hair.

“It’s not so bad, now is it?” asks Jareth. Toby’s face is squinched up in misery and fascination, as though he cannot choose between the two and hovers in the middle ground of dreadful, tenuous unknowing. 

“Hush,” says Jareth, and the child is quieted.

Jareth brings the crystals back, and sends them looping back and forth before the child’s gaze. “Here,” he says, kicking the goblin away to resume its duties elsewhere, “I’ll show you again.”

↬

She reaches the oubliette and Jareth begins to worry.

His traps can only work if they are executed with the faith he demands of his people, and his people are apparently not as faithful as he had thought.

The hands that line the darkened shaft are the hands of sinners and murderers, defilers and non-believers. They have seen such horrors that the deepest black cannot match the tarnish on their souls and the oubliette is the only place for them.

“We’re the Helping Hands,” they chant as light passes over their forms. They make mockery of human emotion, and when Jareth turns his blindest eye toward them he sees his own face in their creations. They whisper forever, whether he is watching or not. (And he is always watching, somehow.)

They tell a million stories and most of them are lies, but he listens for the tales that rattle and ring like bells, and he knows these ones are the truth of the girl and her path.

He likes them less than those which are false.

The farther the creatures live from the Center the less they feel it’s weight.

That wart who patrolled the perimeter is already slipping, caught up in the girl’s inimitable porcelain charm, and Jareth knows he will crack before she does. Names tend to lose meaning to Jareth, but Hogbat holds the girl’s name as sacred, like the spoils he won from her.

So he sets the cleaners on them. Not because it will stop them for a while, but he is bitter and he wishes to bite.

↚

The Hunting Grounds are the King’s property, according to a placard at the entrance. Past the sign is just more maze, as far as Sarah can see. It twists and turns just like the rest of it.

The Hunting Grounds is full of animals, Hoggle says, and hunting them is forbidden.

Sarah doesn’t see any animals. She sees nothing out of the ordinary – if the ordinary is writhing walls, the feeling of eyes which are always watching, the sense that the distant laughter is aimed at you, faint and far away but always just behind your back. 

“I thought the whole labyrinth was the property of the King,” she says to Hoggle, looking around curiously.

There are statues here. 

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” grumbles Hoggle, irritated because she does not understand the rules she has not been taught. “The _King_ is the property of the _Labyrinth_. ”

But that makes no sense at all, so Sarah asks, “Who owns the labyrinth?”

Hoggle eyes her suspiciously. “The magic owns the Labyrinth.”

↷

Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his father sold him.

Once upon a time, there was a girl, and her brother sold her.

Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he was lost in the woods.

The people said there were goblins in those woods and they would steal the child. Big teeth and sharp claws; the boy was sure to be lost forever.

He came back, later that evening, after everyone had worked up to a tizzy, and then resigned themselves to mourning.

He was completely unharmed.

The goblins had not stolen him from the path, he had merely followed a swallow through the trees. The goblins had not lured him into the darkness with trickery, his mother had turned away while he toddled off.

That night he cried incessantly and his mother looked on bitterly.

And the exchange was made.

Goblins don't steal human children, what an absurd notion.

What on earth would a goblin want with a human child?

Goblins buy human children, because then they are no longer human, and the goblins are free to do as they will.

Once upon a time, there was a boy and his sister sold him.

And then she came to steal him back.

But goblins do not steal human children. An exchange has to be made.

↰

Sarah wants to point out that she didn't mean it. She didn't mean any of it.

Hoggle looks at her with solemn eyes and says “But you’s said it, so’s they mean it for you.” 

“That doesn't make any sense,” Sarah says, trying not to whine. She's 16, she's practically a grown up, and she doesn’t understand why the rules her parents told her don’t apply here. 

Once, right before his wedding, her father had sat Sarah down and told her about her mom’s affair. How she had cheated on him, on them, and then left them for good.

He said it wasn't Sarah’s fault.

She had said it was all his. She had said she hated him.

Now she looks at the warped stone animals of the Hunting Grounds and thinks she recognizes that look in their eyes. Her father had looked that way. 

But he had said it was alright. He understood when she said sorry, he said he forgave her.

Maybe that was like this too, and she didn't mean it, but the words meant it for her instead. She bites her lip and turns away from the wide eyes of a frozen elk, six feet tall and bellowing forever.

Only she hadn't said she was sorry, had she? 

She said she didn't mean it.

“Words is like fairies,” Hoggle says, touching the clear plastic globes of his bracelet gently. His hoarse voice is thoughtful, but matter of fact. “They might look shiny, but they can be bitter, and they bites, and once they're loose you can never be knowing how far they'll get.”

The animals in the Hunting Grounds are all like that, trapped in a word that someone only mostly meant.

↻

The thing about magic is that is has to come from somewhere.

Ingredients. Slime and snails. Owl feathers, peacock bones, hens blood. A hundred shiny beetle shells and a long silver knife. 

Words. I wish. I want. 

To make a masquerade inside a soap bubble, take a mirror made of time, and fold it into quarters. Season it with memories and trinkets, clear plastic baubles and a music box ballerina. Light it with a mother’s tears and serve silver wine in icy goblets, turning to the song of infinite space and time. 

The figures are all Jareth’s, made from his predecessors and successors. It’s a long lineage, and they are all so out of focus now that they provide the perfect template. 

Jareth weaves the glass from the babe’s eyes, pulling glossy reflections of sister and toys and home and safe from the imprints in the irises. 

Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby. 

He wonders how it will take him to forget that name. It’s different thing to try forgetting someone else’s name.

Toby reaches out with fat pink fingers to touch a dangling shard of his mother’s face. It’s not the same mother, Jareth can see that, but the face is mostly generic anyway, with eyebrows and teeth and soft flesh on the cheeks. It’s not actually the point, that the mother is the same, since it’s all just about the idea of mother.

Jareth remembers his mother.

Almost.

He remembers that she never called for him. 

That’s all that counts, at this point.

Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby.

“How’s that, Jareth?” asks Jareth, and the babe turns blue eyes towards him, acknowledging the Word.

The spell has already begun.

The thing about magic is that it needs a focal point. 

And Jareth is starting to bleed at the edges, blurring and fading into haze. He doesn’t have much time left for infinity.

↧

“What’s it like to grow up?” Jareth asks the room with Toby in his lap, touching the babe’s hair, the rattle of his bones.

The goblins stop whatever it is that they’re doing. Jareth is never really sure what they do on a regular basis, aside from watching the Above, peering into the mist and rain.

“Well?”

The goblins laugh on cue. Jareth rolls his eyes. 

One with long spindly arms and short stunted legs shuffles towards him, blinking its ink drop eyes. 

“It is a journey, not a destination,” it says in a creaky voice like an old book.

“It’s not fair,” says another with an enormous lower lip and a shelf-like brow.

“It’s all an act,” chimes in one which is no larger than the hen on the window ledge. 

“It takes a long time,” adds a fourth, who is quite old indeed by goblin standards. It has white frazzled hair protruding from its ears and a squint. 

“Have you ever done it?” Jareth smooths a hand down the babe’s striped costume and thinks about how long he has worn silk and leather, fur and dust, like the goblin King must.

“Oh no,” says the old one, “it’s much too difficult.”

“I think it’s almost my time,” says Jareth, and he doesn’t know what that means, but even if the goblins have never done it, he’s sure he’ll be able to pull it off. 

The goblins have taught him well after all, and so had Jareth, a long long time ago.

The clamor starts then. 

Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby. 

The girl has arrived. No one has ever made it this far, even if they had challenged in the first place. Jareth has been doing his research, peering through time and stone to the stories of the ancient throne.

The magic has to protect itself, it can’t have allowed them to get close enough once they made the bargain.

Jareth no longer has to turn his gaze through glass and crystal to see them.

“Let’s get that rat who calls himself Jareth,” Higger says, and Jareth wants to laugh.

⤠

The throne room is the epicenter.

It is where the magic has concentrated, and where Jareth has concentrated the magic.

It crumbles.

It’s been crumbling. 

Sarah sees madness like a calculated trap, one more test for the sake of a bitter battle.

Jareth cannot help this part. He is not even trying to be cruel.

“Everything that you wanted I have done,” Jareth hisses. He is tired, so tired, for the girl and her expectations are so bright and shining they take up so much space. She demands attention which Jareth cannot afford. 

When she says the words she breaks the spell.

When she says the words, she casts a new spell, and the magic of the Labyrinth hears it. 

Jareth doesn’t understand. These are not the rules he is used to following, not the ones he had been taught.

He has been following them for a long time, but even Jareth is not as old as he looks. 

He’s certainly not as old as the goblins think he is. 

It’s not fair, not by his basis for comparison. “I ask for so little,” he says. “I will be your slave,” he says, like he is not already.

⤳

They have to find another baby, another gift from the Above, a trade of dreams for mortal flesh and begin the spell again.

Jareth sits the throne, the goblin throne where the baby could have been next, and turns his mad eyes back toward the corners of the Labyrinth and moves the power like he has done for years. 

If the Labyrinth falls it will spread outwards.

The creatures who can leave do.

The goblins have no such choice. 

Either way, no one can outrun the magic.

Who knows how long he’ll have to wait. 

It’s only forever. 

That’s not long at all.

⥁

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> idk man, let's roll out & finish some old weird oneshots!!! 
> 
> it got way more surreal when I came back to it after a year and a half...


End file.
